.
On November 30, 2020 Roger Pielke, jr posted “The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science”. It was subtited : “Much of climate research is focused on implausible scenarios of the future, but implementing a course correction will be difficult”.
It is almost a year and a half since posting but the problem still exists.
Posted in AGW, Climate Models, CO2, fossil fuels, IPCC, Uncategorized
I am rebloging a posting by Issues & Insights titled:
“Its Time to Admit IT:EVs are Evil”.
The authors zero in on these issues:
To read it as I & I wrote it click here.
cbdakota
Posted in Batteries, CO2, Electric Vehicles
President Biden has called for 50% of all new car and light truck sales be Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) by 2030. Even more draconian laws from States like California say:
“…….. all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide”.
That means no gasoline vehicle sales can be made in California after 2035.
What is the outcome of these proposals that only allow ZEV to be made? The Fuels Institute, a proponent of the man-made global warming, posted “Reducing carbon emissions effectively-now and tomorrow” has the answer. The charts premise is that of California’s pathway, meaning 100% of new car sales are ZEVs and no new fossil fuel powered cars can be sold.
“As the chart shows, in a hypothetical scenario in which all U.S. light duty vehicle sales are required to be ZEV in 2035, the market would likely only convert 16.5% of vehicles in operation to ZEV by that time. This would leave 83.5% of vehicles in 2035 still operating primarily on liquid fuels used in combustion engines with a potential life expectancy of longer than 20 years. This means that BEVs and a cleaner electricity grid will not be able to significantly cut transportation-related CO2e emissions for many years to come, resulting in increased atmospheric concentrations that will linger for another 100-plus years
It might be possible for the manufacturers to make enough ZEVs, but it may not make any difference if the manufacturers can. The cost, the range anxiety, the charging time, fires, etc. have turned off the common man buying ZEVs so far.
cbdakota
Open Letter to Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy
Your leadership regarding Climate Change is very important. Your members must weigh in on the nearly a half of trillion dollars of subsidies for the so-called renewable energy projects and directing legislation to stop the urge of the Democrats to rush headlong into unproven schemes to replace fossil fuels.
Your Email for contributions has a list of your objectives beyond just energy that are things I hope you can obtain though it will be uphill with the Senate and Executive in the hands of the Democrats. I hope you can find ways to block the Biden Administration’s plans.
This letter is to focus on just one part of the House’s objectives and that is to counter the disinformation that the global warming alarmists have been spewing. The way things work now are—-Media support the alarmist’s “experts” and they know that there will be no significant effort by skeptics to counter the alarmists.
Now that you can control the Committee’s agenda, your members should standup to the global warming alarmists. This will take some courage on everyone’s part because some members are afraid of the media. Fox’s post titled “Politico Urges readers don’t believe the polls showing sinking levels of trust of media” One of Politico staff protested the results of the Gallup poll. But the poll says:
“The recent polling showed only 16% of Americans said they have a “great deal or quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers with only 11% of Americans having confidence in television. It represented a 5% decrease since 2021 and was also the lowest rating given towards newspapers since Gallup’s original poll back in 1973.
And there is no need not be afraid of the title “skeptic”. Almost without exception skeptics believe that the globe is warming.
The skeptics need a microphone that is so big it can work around the media. I think the House of Representatives can do this.
The House could have regular sessions of skeptical testimony. The House should rely on the skeptical experts, of which there are many, to counteract the alarmists. Don’t be afraid to allow the alarmists “experts” to testify, too. The alarmists usually get beaten in debates with the skeptics. In fact they have a reluctance to debate. Try getting Al Gore to debate any skeptical expert. No way, he always backs out. You will be doing this to help educate all of the Members of the House of Representatives. Record all the sessions and publish them on YouTube.
Who are these skeptic experts? You can find them on The Clintel website that has posted “There is No Climate Emergency.”
The site names 1010 experts listed by country. (The site needs to update the list as it has now grown to 1499 experts.)
The Skeptical Daily post a summary regarding the skeptics on the lists and some notable quotes. They call the list of the skeptic experts a Declaration.
“The scale of the opposition to modern day ‘settled’ climate science is remarkable, given how difficult it is in academia to raise grants for any climate research that departs from the political orthodoxy. A lead author of the declaration, Professor Richard Lindzen, has called the current climate narrative “absurd”, but acknowledged that trillions of dollars and the relentless propaganda from grant-dependent academics and agenda-driven journalists currently says it is not absurd.
The Declaration is an event of enormous importance, although it will be ignored by the mainstream media. But it is not the first time distinguished scientists have petitioned for more realism in climate science. In Italy, the discoverer of nuclear anti-matter Emeritus Professor Antonino Zichichi recently led 48 local science professors in stating that human responsibility for climate change is “unjustifiably exaggerated and catastrophic predictions are not realistic”. In their scientific view, “natural variation explains a substantial part of global warming observed since 1850”. Professor Zichichi has signed the WCD.
The Declaration notes that the Earth’s climate has varied for as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm periods. “It is no surprise that we are experiencing a period of warming,” it continues. Climate models have many shortcomings, it says, “and are not remotely plausible as global policy tools”. They blow up the effect of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, but ignore any beneficial effects. “CO2 is not a pollutant,” it says. “It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth; additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yield of crops worldwide.”
Last year, Steven Koonin, an Under-Secretary of Science in the Obama Administration, published a book titled Unsettled in which he noted that, “The science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what our actions will be.” He also noted that rigidly promulgating the idea that climate change is settled demeans and chills the scientific enterprise, “retarding its progress in these important matters”. In 2020, the long-time green activist Michael Shellenberger wrote a book called Apocalypse Never in which he said he believed the conversation about climate change and the environment had in the last few years “spiraled out of control”. Much of what people are told about the environment, including the climate, is wrong, he wrote.
These experts get printed in skeptic websites, but we need to widen the audience.
First and foremost the media, the alarmists and some educators have convinced the young that they may die soon. This poisoning of our childrens minds must be stopped.
From a November 27, 2022 posting by EuroNews.Green “More than two thirds of children between the ages of seven and twelve are worried about climate change, a new survey reveals.
“The climate crisis can be overwhelming. (Click on that climate link. See what the kids are being taught.)
Statistics often paint a dire picture of the earth’s trajectory. The UN has warned that existing climate pledges provide ‘no credible pathway’ to preventing temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Deadly floods and fires are on the rise, while global wildlife populations have shrunk 70 per cent since 1970.
Presented with these facts, it’s easy to sink into eco-anxiety. Previous studies have proven that this distress is heightened in children and the new survey confirms this.”
Secondly, the public should know that the basis of the catastrophic climate change is the computer forecasted global temperatures. It goes, things get very hot, glaciers melt, sea level rises, cities are deluged with sea water, crops cannot survive, creatures cannot adapt to temperatures and huge extinctions occur, etc.
The following chart shows that the forecast temperatures by the alarmist are higher than the actual temperature readings and that the forecast temperatures become more ridiculous as time goes by. These temperatures are the ones They use to forecast catastrophe.
All the squiggly lines are individual computer forecasts. The Red line is the average global warming temperatures predicted by the computers. The lower Green straight line is the mean of the actual measured temperature for this same period. Note that as the years go by, the computer forecast gets further away from the actual measured temperature. The actual temperatures noted in the chart are based upon weather balloons and satellite measurements. The actual temperatures are rising but not at the rate that will cause a catastrophic outcome. The computer produced temperature forecasts are used to brain wash our children.
“In 2023 it’s hard to avoid seeing images and headlines like these. The result for many is a deep seated fear[5], anxiety[6] [7], and pessimism[8] [9] about the future. The topic of Climate Change (CC) has seeped into nearly every facet of our lives, and never in a positive way. It’s always present as a dark cloud hanging over society; a source of guilt for those who indulge in some of life’s most basic pleasures, the basis of moralistic judgments by those who like to signal their concern, and the cause of nihilism[10] [11] and hopelessness[12] felt by many in the youngest generations.
Why does CC have such deeply negative connotations and harmful effects on people’s mental well being? Because we are constantly reminded of the six dark and destructive consequences of CC:
1) heat will cause millions to die or live in misery
2) tens of millions (some say billions) will be forced to migrate
3) a million or more species will become extinct in just a few decades
4) sea level rise will have disastrous world-wide consequences
5) agricultural production will be devastated, causing widespread famine
6) humanity will suffer floods, droughts, and other terrible natural disasters
These are the six pillars of climate change despair that activists and the media obsess over. The activists do it because they think they are saving the planet; the media do it because bad news gets more clicks than good news. Plus, they both do it to appear virtuous. They both keep ramping up the rhetoric so that with each passing year the predictions about each of these consequences become even more frightening and apocalyptic. There are some lesser concerns (eg. Arctic and glacier melting), but these six are the catastrophic ones.
No wonder so many people are depressed and pessimistic about the future. It shouldn’t be surprising there’s an epidemic of “climate change anxiety”.
But is it in any way justified? What is the truth (if any) behind these catastrophic predictions? That’s what I want to examine here. The fact is, every one of these pillars is made of sand, and crumbles apart when subjected to the slightest critical scrutiny.
The author, Doug R Rogers, puts together a comprehensive essay. Please read it to it end by clicking here.
The Fourth issue is the headlong race to decarbonize the world. Renewables (mostly wind and solar) are believed to be the future energy sources, leaving fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) to be only available chemical feed stocks, for example. Combined with electric vehicles (EV) the globe will be free of carbon dioxide gas vented into the atmosphere they say.
The benefits accrued by fossil fuels are discounted in this rush to decarbonization. The benefits from vented CO2 are enormous. The greening of the globe has been the result of the vented CO2. Crops, such as wheat, oats, rice, potatoes, cane, etc. have skyrocketed in quantity feeding billions of new people.
Renewables are not reliable. What we know is that wind and solar are dependent on the weather. No wind, no sun, no renewable produced electrical energy. No where has a major grid sourced by solely wind and solar been demonstrated. No plans have been made to prove a grid can actually run solely on wind and solar. Grids have to be supplied 24/7 with NO interruptions. Yet we find that the politicians, urged on by the media, are willing to build more wind and solar capacity and prematurely shut down fossil fuels before they can prove that renewables can provide 24/7 with no interruptions.
The enormous upset that has occurred in western Europe would not have been so serious if renewable could have done the job. For example, Germany has renewables with name plate capacity greater than the nation’s electrical needs. But at times in September ‘22 the wind did not blow, and the sun shined only intermittently. So no matter what their nameplate capacity was, wind and solar were producing little to no electricity. That happened and they stumbled through, saved by natural gas and coal based production of electricity.
Obviously, there are many more issues than the several I have mentioned. I picked them because the first one, traumatizing our children has to be stopped NOW. The other three go right to the heart of the problem. The experts could line up excellent debates or testimonies at House Committee requests.
Expert testimony by skeptics has been ignored by the media. So how can we get around that?
Another interesting team is the Center of the American Experiment. The Center of the American Experiment is a Minnesota-based think tank that advocates for conservative and free-market principles.[5] One of their tasks has been to target the objectional courses that public schools in Minnesota are putting into their schooling. The Center of the American Experiment has people and programs to show what is going on and how to change it. The group will speak to PTAs school boards or other interested groups. This group has been successfully getting schools to drop radical racial material. This could be a model for another skeptical group to copy.
.
Work with the local TV stations. They are often in need of topics to produce for their locality. Hire people that know how to do communications. Make sure that Federal Departments that award research money gives skeptics fair treatment. If they don’t, you can have your way with their funding.
I hope that some of the ideas are useful to you.
Good luck
cbdakota
Last week the Great Reset group gathered in Davos Switzerland to continue contriving the destruction of capitalism using global warming as the vehicle. These so-called elites arrived using an alleged 1200 private jets. If they actually believed that carbon dioxide (CO2) is pushing the planet ultimately to an apocalypse, they would do these meetings by Zoom . But instead, they choose to create large amounts of jet engine exhausts of CO2 into the atmosphere. No, they believe that they should govern the planet. To do that they need to spark fear that global warming will bring on extinction. And only these elite can save you by turning governance over to them.
A Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/23/editorial-for-select-at-davos-money-is-key-to-stay/?mc_cid=cc44f4808d&mc_eid=557687911 editorial focused the money as follows: (posting is behind a paywall)”
“Beware of the individual who refers to his ilk as “we select group of human beings.” It’s the unmistakable mark of the elite who believe their concern for climate can save the world. Mindful that those who guaranteed the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines now associated with disturbing health anomalies derive from the same exclusive class, Americans should regard the purveyors of climate change remedies with studied caution.
The most self-assured of this sort have a habit of showing up for the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering, which recently concluded in Davos, Switzerland. With his “select group” puffery, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, John Kerry, gathered his fellow discussion panelists and audience into a league of their own.
It is all a part of forum founder Klaus Schwab’s plan to “master the future” through climate change activism. Eager to oblige, Mr. Kerry urged all within earshot to rebuff any self-image of “a crazy tree-hugging lefty liberal” and embrace their identity of the “almost extraterrestrial” breed who are “saving the planet.” He made the case that the key to staying cool is “money, money, money, money, money, money, money”: The denizens of Davos want $3 trillion annually to finance greenhouse gas reductions.
By contrast, climate guru and former Vice President Al Gore showed little hesitation in personifying the crazy tree-hugger. Referring to human-caused atmospheric emissions, the Davos forum regular claimed, “That’s what is boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers and the rain bombs and sucking the moisture out of the land, creating the droughts and raising the sea level and causing these waves of climate refugees predicted to reach one billion in this century.”
All this “settled science” from a self-appointed climate expert who, according to The Washington Post, could not quite manage a gentleman’s C in his Harvard science classes.”
I think that this man-made catastrophe theory will only be abandoned when the cost to fund this program becomes too high for the average citizen and/or explicit examples of failures become so common that people will no longer put up with it. A major failure would be a long stretch of global cooling. High priced electricity and frequent black outs will be a trigger too. And ultimately when it becomes known that renewables are useless without backup nuclear and/or fossil fuels.
When politicians are faced with being voted out, we will be able to drop this crap.
Real science will then out the charlatan’s “settled science” and they will be defamed.
The average citizen may become distrustful of any scientist, unfortunately because of this.
cbdakota
Posted in Al Gore, CO2, fossil fuels, Renewable Energy, The Reset
The chart above shows the forecast for Solar Cycles 25, 26 and beyond by Valentina Zharkova.Phd. She believes that she and her team have determined how to forecast solar cycle activity. Solar Cycle 25 is underway and she predicts it will be less active than Solar Cycle 24 and Solar Cycle 26 will be much less active.
Madame Zharkova is much bolder than many other experts with respect to when or if there will be a solar minimum. Before we discuss Madame Zharkova, let’s look into some of the issues that surround the question of an upcoming Solar Minimum.
** The video begins at (2 minutes and 14 seconds.)
To begin with, look at the December 2022 Global temperature. It dropped to an anomaly of 0.05C from November 2022’s 0.17C anomaly. This measurement continues the decline of global temperatures since the last El Nino where the anomaly peaked at about 0.4 C. (Red line)
This has resulted in a number of people saying we are on our way to another “little ice age”. Let’s look at several predictions of serious global cooling
ENSO is the system name acronym for and the Southern Oscillation. It a major factor affecting global temperature.
The El Nino (ocean warming) and the La Nina (ocean cooling) are considered natural phenomena, meaning that they are not man-made actions. A simplistic description of this phenomena is that over a period of time sun and or submerged volcanos, warm a body of western Pacific Ocean, lying along the equator and its temperature rises. This causes atmospheric changes and the hot water flows eastward to the coast of South America. This is called El Nino. After several years the conditions change and the body of water flows westward and cool, deep ocean water along South America coast rises This is the La Nina.. This ebb and flow has a major effect on global weather.
The above chart illustrates the Nino and Nina occurrences from 1990 to the present. Comparing the temperature chart and the Ninos charts show that when an El Nino occurs the global temperature rises. Conversely global temperature drops when a La Nina occurs. The charts seems to show that El Ninos are stronger that La Ninas. (It would be interesting if someone had measured the chart area for the two.)
Now eyeballing the charts, it looks like the strong El Ninos, a natural occurrence, are the major mover of the global temperatures.
Examining the global temperature chart, the period following the 1997 -1998 El Nino, stretching out to about 2015 shows that global temperature is flat, in other words, no significant change in global temperature was recorded. Something like 15/16 years. This happened even though atmospheric C02 was increasing. Does this relegate CO2 to be only a minor forcing? Does this indicate that the sun (or volcanos) are causing global temperatures to rise?
Viewing Solar Cycles.
Solar Cycle 24 was much less active than its predecessors. The new Cycle 25 activity is almost identical to Solar Cycle 24 as can be seen in the following chart
Cycle 25 at 30 months after cycle start is the green line and that is where Cycle 24, the black line, was at thirty months. The other Cycles, from other years, that had unusually low activity are shown on this chart. Cycle 24 the black line was less activity than the others.
For contrast, the following chart shows the “Modern Maximum”, group of Cycles, meaning very active. The chart is a little dated as the last rising blue line is Solar Cycle 24.
The solar cycles 24 and 25 are substantially less active than their predecessors. There is really no strong signal yet that the temperature is dropping due to low activity Solar Cycles. Perhaps there is a time delay built into the system.
Cloud Formation due to weak Solar Cycles
This allows us to examine three theories. First comes the Svensmark theory: From the posting “comes this description of the theory:
“In 1995, Henrik Svensmark discovered a startling connection between the cosmic ray flux from space and cloud cover. He found that when the sun is more active–more sunspots, a stronger magnetic field, larger auroras, stronger solar winds, etc.–fewer cosmic rays strike the earth and cloud cover is reduced, resulting in warmer temperatures.” When the sun is inactive, more of them penetrate the atmosphere. Upon reaching the lower atmosphere where more sulphur dioxide, water vapor, and ozone is present, the cosmic rays ionize the air, releasing electrons that aid in the formation of more CCN and form more dense clouds. This increase in low-cloud amount reflects more solar energy to space, cooling the planet.”
CERN set up chambers to test this theory. While there was some verification, they said that cosmic rays did form clouds, but the formation was much too small to have any effect. It appears that there are many that still think Svensmark is correct. We will have to wait to see future developments.
There are some new theories positing that Ultra Violet (UV) is a player.
First some UV information from Wiki: “The Sun emits ultraviolet radiation at all wavelengths, including the extreme ultraviolet where it crosses into X-rays at 10 nm. Sunlight in space at the top of Earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 50% infrared light, 40% visible light, and 10% ultraviolet light, for a total intensity of about 1400 W/m2 in vacuum.[22]
The atmosphere blocks about 77% of the Sun’s UV, when the Sun is highest in the sky (at zenith), with absorption increasing at shorter UV wavelengths. At ground level with the sun at zenith, sunlight is 44% visible light, 3% ultraviolet, and the remainder infrared.[23][24] Of the ultraviolet radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface, more than 95% is the longer wavelengths of UVA, with the small remainder UVB. Almost no UVC reaches the Earth’s surface.[25]
The shorter bands of UVC, as well as even more-energetic UV radiation produced by the Sun, are absorbed by oxygen and generate the ozone in the ozone layer when single oxygen atoms produced by UV photolysis of dioxygen react with more dioxygen. The ozone layer is especially important in blocking most UVB and the remaining part of UVC not already blocked by ordinary oxygen in air.”
Here is one of the UV theories It is called the Winter GateKeeper Hypothesis. I would like to say that I know enough to describe this hypothesis, but I can not. Dr Judith Curry has posted it on her site, which I think is a favorable appraisal of this hypothesis. She has also noted another researcher which seems to have a favorable opinion. So I will give you a summary:
“The Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis integrates different components of the transport system in the stratosphere, troposphere, and ocean. A schematic of the energy processes involved is presented in Fig. 8.1, with energy transport represented by white arrows. Solar modulation starting in the stratosphere affects all transport, and Vinós (2022) showed a solar effect on ENSO and the polar vortex. The mechanism by which solar activity modulates ENSO activity is still unknown, but this author proposes a solar modulation of the Brewer-Dobson tropical upwelling, known as the “tropical route” of the “top-down mechanism” (Maycock & Misios 2016; Vinós 2022).”
“Fig. 8.1. Northern Hemisphere winter meridional transport outline. The energy gain/loss ratio at the top of the atmosphere determines the maximal energy source in the tropical band and the maximal energy sink in the Arctic in winter. Incoming solar energy is distributed in the stratosphere and troposphere/surface where it is subjected to different transport modulations. Energy (white arrows) ascends from the surface to the stratosphere at the tropical pipe (left dashed line) and is transported towards the polar vortex (right dashed line) by the Brewer–Dobson circulation. Stratospheric transport is determined by UV heating at the tropical ozone layer, which establishes a temperature gradient affecting zonal wind strength through thermal wind balance, and by the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). This double control determines the behavior of planetary waves (black arrows) and determines if the polar vortex undergoes a biennial coupling with the QBO (BO). In the tropical ocean mixed-layer, ENSO is the main energy distribution modulator. While the Hadley cell participates in energy transport and responds to its intensity by expanding or contracting, most energy transport in the tropics is done by the ocean. Changes in transport intensity result in the main modes of variability, the AMO, and PDO. Outside the tropics, most of the energy is transferred to the troposphere, where synoptic transport by eddies along storm tracks is responsible for the bulk of the transport to high latitudes. The strength of the polar vortex determines the high latitudes winter climate regime. A weak vortex promotes a warm Arctic/ cold continents winter regime, where more energy enters the Arctic exchanged by cold air masses moving out. Jet streams (PJS, polar; TJS, tropical; PNJ, polar night) constitute the boundaries and limit transport. Red oval, the part of the Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis studied in Veretenenko 2022. Figure from Vinós 2022”
Finally, a few notes about the Zharkova theory.
From the posting in Principia Scientific titled “The Woman Who Could Cancel Net Zero”comes another theory. The woman in this case is Professor Valentina Zharkova of the University of Northumbria. The professor’s fields are applied mathematics, plasma physics, pattern recognition, solar-terrestrial physics and solar activity. She forecasts that “in the next 30yrs, global warming problem will be last thing in our mind. Then the solar cycles return to being active.
With her team, she has studied the Sun’s many magnetic fields. She says that sunspots are not a strong enough signal to base any predictions on. So the team separated the magnetic fields in separate components with a principal component analysis using Eigen vectors and Eigen values. She used the output to create a method to predict solar cycle activity. She maintains that she demonstrated that the teams work can closely match the past solar cycles and they can use it to project the future solar cycle activity.
It would be enormous step in understanding the Sun if Dr Zharkova’s system proves out. It might well be a big hit on the man-made global warming theory, too.
cbdakota
Posted in AGW, CO2, cosmic rays, ENSO, Ozone, Sun, sun and climate, Sunspots, The Pause, volcanoes
Climate catastrophism may be contributing to the youth mental health crisis. In a recent international youth survey, 45% reported thoughts of climate change negatively affecting their daily lives and functioning, and 40% reported being hesitant to have children (10).
In summary, a wide range of climate scenarios should be explored, but, with implausible catastrophic scenarios already a major focus of scientific research, calls for a greater emphasis in this direction risk crowding out a needed focus on more plausible futures.
And from The Colorado Springs Gazette article, titled “Boulder scientists warn of ‘climate change catastrophism,’”
A 2020 survey by the American Psychological Association supports their concern. “Nearly half of those age 18-34 (47%) say the stress they feel about climate change affects their daily lives,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, the Psychological Association’s chief executive officer.
Just to magnify the illegitimate use of forecasts to spread these despicable ideas of the world to come to an end soon is shown in the following chart.
The box on the right portrays the CO2 in the atmosphere forecasts made by groups within the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Y axis charts the CO2 emissions in the outgoing years where the top line is the massive CO2 prediction that will produce very high global warming temperature forecasts. The line just below is the most probable forecast which is a mix of renewables and fossil fuels. The others are fantasy IMHO.
The box on the left’s Y axis show the percent of forecasts made using the various CO2 emissions paths. The X axis is the forecasts during the IPCC Assessment Report (AR5) in 2014 and the IPCC AR 6 in 2022. The bars show the use of the different CO2 forecasts to make their predictions. It is apparent that the Alarmists felt that they need to do more frightening by the fact that more predictions using the massive CO2 atmosphere prediction than they did in 2014. The forecast using the line I said was the mix of renewables and fossil fuel was nearly non-existent. The massive CO2 was used more than any of the remaining lines that essentially forecasting fossil fuel use going to zero.
cbdakota
Judith Curry is an eminent scientist and a skeptic. Most of the discussion in this posting, comes from her blog Climate, ETC., titled: “The climate ‘crisis’ isn’t what it used to be”.
Growing realization by the climate establishment that the threat of future warming has been cut in half over the past 5 years.
Summary: The climate “catastrophe” isn’t what it used to be. Circa 2013 with publication of the IPCC AR5* Report, RCP8.5 was regarded as the business-as-usual emissions scenario, with expected warming of 4 to 5 oC by 2100. Now there is growing acceptance that RCP8.5 is implausible, and RCP4.5 is arguably the current business-as-usual emissions scenario. Only a few years ago, an emissions trajectory that followed RCP4.5 with 2 to 3 oC warming was regarded as climate policy success. As limiting warming to 2 oC seems to be in reach (now deemed to be the “threshold of catastrophe”),[i] the goal posts were moved in 2018 to reduce the warming target to 1.5 oC. Climate catastrophe rhetoric now seems linked to extreme weather events, most of which are difficult to identify any role for human-caused climate change in increasing either their intensity or frequency.
The main stream media is currently awash with articles from prominent journalists on how the global warming threat less than we thought. Here are some prominent articles:
At the heart of this good news is abandonment of RCP8.5 from UNFCCC policy making. The hero of science behind this abandonment is Justin Ritchie, a recent Ph.D. graduate (whose work has been cited.
The COP26 and now the COP27 have quietly dropped RCP8.5 (and SSP5-8.5) from their considerations, focusing on the envelope between RCP4.5 and RCP2.6. The grand poohbahs of the IPCC apparently didn’t see this coming (or preferred to keep spinning the alarm), since they instructed climate modelers for CMIP6 to continue a focus on SSP5-8.5, and climate researchers continue to focus on this scenario in their impacts publications. The IPCC AR6 prominently featured SSP5-8.5, although WGI did make this lukewarm statement
The second so-called scientific advance is lower values of climate sensitivity. The so-called advance is associated with the IPCC AR6 decision NOT to include values derived from climate models (which have dominated previous IPCC reports). They implicitly acknowledge that climate models are running too hot and that you can pretty much get whatever value of climate sensitivity that you want from a climate model (this has been blindingly obvious to me and many others for over a decade). The IPCC AR6 lowered the upper likely bound of ECS to 4.0oC (from 4.5oC previously); this further acts to reduce the amount of projected warming. The IPCC AR6 also raised the lower likely bound of ECS to 2.5oC (from 1.5oC). Raising the lower bound of ECS is on very shaky ground, as per the recent publication by Nic Lewis
The COP27 is working from a value of expected warming of 2.5oC by 2100. This is arguably still too high for several reasons. IPCC expert judgment dismissed values of climate sensitivity that are on the lower end (that should not have been dismissed as per Nic Lewis’ paper). Further, the IPCC projections do not adequately account for scenarios of future natural climate variability. See these recent posts:
X https://judithcurry.com/2022/01/23/crossing-or-not-the-1-5-and-2-0oc-thresholds/
X https://judithcurry.com/2021/11/21/solar-variations-controversy/
In addition to an insufficient number of solar and volcanic scenarios, the climate models ignore most solar indirect effects, and the climate model treatment of multidecadal and longer internal variability associated with ocean circulations are inadequate. While in principle these factors could go either way in terms of warmer vs cooler, there are several reasons to think these natural factors are skewed towards cooler during the remainder of the 21st century:
Once you include alternative scenarios of natural variability, temperature change by 2100 could easily be below 2oC and even 1.5oC. Recall that this warming is with reference to a baseline of 1850-1900; 1.1oC warming has already occurred.
*AR stands for Assessment Report. These are based upon the content in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) full reports, assembled by working groups. AR6 is the most recent report. The reputation of the ARs is in dispute. The full report, the 6th, is condensed to an AR6. The dispute is that many nonscientific personnel, such as delegates from industry, NGOs, etc. can force change that make the AR inconsistent with the full report.
cbdakota
Bloomberg posts: “China to prioritize energy security over transition to renewables, Xi Says”. President Xi Jinping never has intended to stay with his promise to stop emitting CO2 by 2030. Time and again, the warmers have said how wonderful China is and how bad the US is regarding CO2 emissions. This despite the fact that in the past ten years the US emissions have declined (more than any other nation) while China’s emissions have increased massively. The warmers just recently learned that China had decided in their 5-year plan to up the number of coal plants they planned to install. The warmers just knew that was not going to happen, but sure as the Sun Rises in the east, they were wrong.
Now, Xi says:”
“He will use prudence about governing China’s efforts to peak and eventually zero out carbon emissions.”
So, 2030 is not a firm date anymore.
It happens that I agree with his reasoning (that I underlined). Bloomberg posting related this:
”Xi speech made China’s path to decarbonization clear saying It won’t stop burning fossil fuels until it’s confident that clean energy can reliably replace them. The speech shows more emphasis on energy security and the significant role of coal in China’s energy supply given the resources endowment.
The Bloomberg posting gives the reader background on China and promises:
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Xi electrified climate activists two years ago when he vowed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 after peaking emissions before 2030. The announcement sparked a massive surge in investment in clean energy by local governments and state-owned firms.
But last year focus began to return to China’s mainstay fuel of coal after a shortage triggered widespread power curtailments to factories, slowing economic growth. The country vowed to increase mining capacity, and production has risen to record levels this year, keeping storage sites well stocked and reducing imports.
China will also expand exploration and development of oil and gas resources, and increase reserves and production as part of the measures to ensure energy security, according to a congress work report released after Xi’s speech.
Does this sound like someone planning to cut back.?
Sorry warmers!
No nation should cut back on fossil fuels until wind and solar can prove they are be reliable suppliers. And that may be never.
cbdakota
Hat tip to Net zero posting. “China to prioritize energy security over transition to renewables, Xi Says”
Posted in Chinese aggression, CO2, Global Temperatures, Uncategorized
SOLAR CYCLE 25 UP-DATE
The comparison of Solar Cycle (SC)25 to its predecessor SC 24 currently indicates that there is little difference in activity at the same point in time after they began. Looking at the chart below, the two bottom lines, are SC 24 and 25. Several months ago, SC 25 was more active than SC 24 and that lead to the thought it would be much more active than SC24. The expert forecasts mostly said that they would be much the same. At this point, the forecasts of similarity appear to be accurate
The following chart shows the history of the recorded SCs. Sunspot numbers have only been collected for recent centuries. When a series of SCs having low numbers of sunspots occur, historically, the result is global cooling. When a series of SCs occur with high numbers of sunspots, the result seems to be warming.
Beginning in the early part of the last century, SCs were highly active, peaking with SC19. SC19 has the record for most sunspots. The SCs that followed were highly active until SC 24. This period has been called a solar maximum.
The timing of the solar maximum and the increase in atmospheric CO2 are rivals for the reason that global temperatures have risen beginning in the latter part of the last century. Perhaps they both have been complicit.
I believe that the Sun is the major factor determining global climate. The trajectory of the SC 24 and probably SC 25 would suggest a global cooling is in the offing. This should be a defining period.
cbdakota
Posted in AGW, CO2, Global Temperatures, Solar Activity, Solar Cycle 24, Solar Cycle 25, sun and climate
Climate Change Sanity 
